


strayed above the highway aisle

by vegarin



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beverly Katz Lives, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegarin/pseuds/vegarin
Summary: Will and Beverly, on a road trip. A season two canon-divergent story that's almost a decade too late.
Relationships: Will Graham & Beverly Katz, Will Graham/Beverly Katz
Comments: 18
Kudos: 51





	strayed above the highway aisle

Will wakes up to a quiet voice humming a tune that he can't name, and for one, sickening moment, he can't place himself.

He breathes in once. Twice. He doesn't know where he is or when it is. He knows his name, but that awareness by itself merits little without context. He’s inside a moving car: he can hear the telltale screech of the tires skidding over the rough asphalt of the interstates.

The seatbelts tug around his chest, but he's not strapped in, so he can slowly unfurl himself in the passenger seat, if he chooses to. There are no four walls of concrete here, crushing him in from all sides, no large hands pressing him down and demanding submission. No grey here, either, except a smattering of clouds in the sky he can see from his side of the car window—through which he can also see the onset of dawn, amber and indigo, spreading over mountain peaks on the horizon.

Calm settles over him, inexplicable in its presence, and he draws from it the strength he needs to turn his head.

Beverly is at the wheel.

The tight wire around his chest loosens, and he remembers.

"Hey," Beverly says, glancing at him. "You good?"

He considers his answer. "Yes," he says. It's just a huff of air, like he's just learning how to make sounds again.

Still, that seems enough. Beverly trains her eyes back on the road, reassured, and soon, she's humming again, quiet and low. He strains to follow the patterns of her fingers, drumming on the wheel. Two. One. Three. And then one.

The slow, unhurried rhythm of them lures him in, and sleep, for once merciful, comes again.

* * *

The next time when Will is awake, the car has already stopped, parked at one side of the highway.

He tries to run his hand down his face. It takes an effort that is almost more than he can spare; his fingers feel like weathered branches, twisted and frail. Through the windshield, he can see Beverly outside, leaning against the hood of the car and phone to one ear. The windows are turning foggy, mist beginning to creep into the clear glass panels around the edges. It's winter now, he realizes.

He can't quite recall the details of the last summer. How the autumn has passed. Or when the winter has begun.

He flinches away from the inherent danger of such thoughts. He focuses on Beverly instead, the way she wildly gestures in the air one handed—the way she stabs at the phone and glares at it, like she’s debating the merit of tossing it into the white steam of water next to the road.

 _Jack or Price_ , he thinks. Possibly Alana, but the tension in her shoulders suggests Jack, most likely.

He watches Beverly shove her phone begrudgingly back into her jacket pocket. The cold air rushes in when she opens the door and slips back into the driver seat.

"Jack?" he asks, not quite knowing when he’s found words again.

"Jack," she confirms. There’s gritted-teeth exasperation to her answer.

He could ask what Jack has said. He would ask, if he really wanted to know. If he cared to know.

He does not, so he doesn't ask. Beverly flips through the radio stations and settles on one blasting some country music that he doesn't know. When she catches his eyes, she throws him a quick smile. The mere gesture feels like permission, that it's okay not to want to know.

A few minutes into the drive, she starts to hum along again. Under the lull of the now-familiar sounds, he drifts.

* * *

They pull into a gas station. Will watches, only half in wakefulness, as Beverly expertly maneuvers around rows of freight trucks to find a spot to park. "Want anything?" she asks, one hand on the door. "I'm getting coffee."

Will shakes his head. He, too, exits the car a moment later, but he doesn’t follow after her. He leans against his side of the car, feels his bones creak, and waits for her return.

The cool air cuts into his lungs. It’s oddly not unpleasant. Last summer, what he could remember of it, was sticky and wet and feverish hot, even when he felt nothing but the shivery chill in the dark grey rooms that had trapped him.

The thought screeches, and with conscious effort, he derails it to his surroundings instead. The mountains are on their left, and the other side of the highway is a flat marshland. Late evening fog is leaving hints at turning into misty rain. Maybe not quite cold enough to snow, not just yet.

The sereneness of it feels foreign, a novelty. He grasps at it, wanting to hold fast. It feels paper-thin.

Beverly returns and hands him a bottle of water and a cheese sandwich. He takes them without wanting to; he can’t quite remember the last time he had food without getting it all back up again. But he sips the water and unwraps the sandwich, just to occupy his hands if nothing else. And because he knows she’s watching, he swallows one bite, trying not to gag at the taste.

She watches him for a moment, and then leans over and takes a half of the sandwich. She nibbles on it experimentally. Her nose crinkles up.

"Wow," she marvels, "this is officially the shittiest sandwich I've ever had."

Without preambles, she plucks the rest of it out of his hand and strides toward the garbage can nearby. She dumps it and brush away the crumbs, her hands deft and practiced—the way they used to pick up and collect stray fibers in crime scenes, just as he remembers.

She returns to his side. For a long moment, they stand shoulder to shoulder, with the feel of the car solid behind them.

 _I had a dream like this before_ , a thought slips between his fingers, unwieldy. _Once._

"East or west?" she asks.

He follows her gaze to the highway, unfolding in front of them. The answer comes, flipping a coin. "East," he says, thinking of the ocean.

"East, it is." She bumps her shoulder against his. "Let's go."

Before he follows her into the car, he turns for another glimpse of the road ahead.

He can't see the end of it, and it feels, somehow, fitting.

* * *

A hand on his shoulder jostles him awake. He comes up clawing at everything he can reach. He tastes blood and flesh.

"Will! _Will_! Stop! It's just me!"

The voice from far away dents at the thick haze, trailing panic at its wake. The voice belongs to Beverly, whose hands hover in mid-air, barely touching his shoulders.

He remembers. Beverly picked a run-of-the-mill Motel 8 for the night _("Shower and sleep? Not actually optional for people."_ ) and got them a room with double beds. She let him choose the side of the room in exchange for the first shower. He watched her flop onto the bed after the shower, watched her promptly fall asleep. He didn't think he could.

But he must have. And now his lungs are sloughing away, and his tongue tastes like copper. His skin feels tattered, like it can barely hold together as his inside leaks out in splinters.

He lets his head drop back on the pillows. He's still breathing in harsh rasps. "God," he croaks out.

"Shit," Beverly murmurs, barely audible. She doesn't touch him again, but he can feel her move closer to him.

"He's still in my head." He wants to scream, scream, _scream_ ; instead, it comes out hoarse, choked, pathetic.

"No, he's not. You got him. We got him, remember?"

He does, he does remember. But it doesn't matter that Hannibal is locked away, with hundreds of miles of distance between them, where he can't harm anyone else ever again— _please, please God, let that still be true_ —because he's already burrowed inside Will, taken roots, and no amount of scorching would get him _out_.

"He is, and I don't, I can't—" he stops, because he still doesn't know where Hannibal Lecter ends and where Will Graham starts and he can’t say that out loud, not even to Beverly. "This can't. I might—he can make me hurt you."

She snorts at that. "You think I'd let you?"

 _No_ , he thinks. No. He carefully tests out the answer, rolling it around in his head. No, she wouldn't. The answer has the ring of truth, and that somehow allows him to breathe, if momentarily.

She continues, "Or that I would let _him_ , in your head or otherwise?"

 _He came close enough_ , Will doesn't remind her. He doesn't want to go there, and even in his fogged state, he can intuit that she doesn't necessarily want to relive that particular experience either, even if he were to believe her.

Even if he were to believe her.

But he's been down that road before. Wanting to believe false.

 _And look where that path has led you, Will,_ Hannibal's voice slithers around him, in him, low and insidious.

He tries not to shudder and fails. "I _can't_ —I shouldn't do this. I should go back. I'm unstable." He rakes a hand down his face, digging nails into his skin. It doesn't help.

"When have you ever been _stable_?"

It takes a long moment, but his breathing evens out, and he opens his eyes. Beverly is looking at him, one eyebrow raised, daring him to disagree with her.

When he doesn't—can't—dispute that, she offers her hand. He takes it, and she helps him up, unceremoniously pushing him toward the bathroom. "Hot shower, now."

He does so, obediently. Under the spray of water, he feels unfettered, unmoored, until he feels the scar in his lower chest. Still hot to the touch, like a branding. It feels like betrayal, that it somehow anchors him still.

 _He wanted to be your everything,_ Alana said, after, her eyes sad.

In that sense and in many else, Hannibal has more than succeeded.

Will stays under water until his skin feels like prunes and his head feels insensate. When he comes out, Beverly tosses him a towel and brings a cup of water to his lips.

"Drink," she orders. He does. She waits until he falls onto the bed again to pull up blankets around him.

"Sleep time," she orders.

And somehow, he follows.

* * *

Will opens his eyes in the dark.

The TV is on, the only light in the room, flickering in blue and white, drawing elongated shadows everywhere.

Will doesn't look around for the dark corners, doesn't look for shades of a white stag lurking at the edges of his periphery. The motel room already shares discernable similarities with its counterparts in an asylum for the criminally insane, or a maximum-security prison, or a hospital ICU. It's within the realm of very real possibilities, that he may wake up at any moment and find himself back in any one of them. It would be familiar enough not to be a surprise, predictable in its recurrence.

Except, in this room is also Beverly, leaning against his bedframe and watching TV with the sound turned off.

Sport channel, he notices dimly. When someone fumbles on screen, she quietly boos under her breath and throws popcorn at the TV.

He falls asleep, listening to her voice.

* * *

Beverly likes waffles for breakfast, enjoys drowning them in various syrups and then attacking them with vigor. Somehow in months working with her side by side, he's never known that, never learned that.

His plate of pancakes is mostly untouched. He's been moving around a piece of strawberry without a real attempt at eating it.

"The tallest snowman in the world," she says. When he stares at her, she shrugs and cuts another piece out of her waffle. "Somewhere in Maine is the tallest snowman in the world, according to the brochures from the motel. Maine boasts lobster bisques and the tallest snowman in the world. We're _definitely_ checking it out."

There's a forced cheer in her voice. She hasn't slept well—she couldn't have, but even the pang of guilt doesn't necessarily make him think that he's managed to do this to her all on his own.

Once, she's told him to ask. Before and after, in the scorched earth, where they had been left crumbling in pieces, he never had. There had been no room left in him to.

 _How would I know if something was up with you?_ he asked her once.

 _You wouldn't,_ she told him, _but I would tell you if you asked me._

"Are you—are you okay?" he asks now. The words seem awkward, clumsy— _hypocritical_ —but he bears them, as much as he could.

If she's startled by his question, she doesn't show it. She considers her answer before she says, "I'm better."

Better now that the creepy serial killer bastard masquerading as everyone’s best-friend-psychiatrist is behind the fucking bars, she doesn’t say, but it's laid bare in her voice.

"And you?" she asks, her gaze as direct as her words. "Are you okay, Will?"

In the aftermath of it all, he's been asked thousands of questions. Somehow, no one had thought to ask him this. He wants to laugh, heartsick. "I'm broken."

"You’re still here. You can't all be broken."

Her words could have been yet another string of countless soothing words he had been subjected to—could have been, but Beverly Katz that he knows doesn't deal in white lies or self-deceptions.

 _He's robbed me of breath_ , Will thinks. Of thought. Of legs to stand on.

Of myself.

He wants to believe her, against all his better judgments.

* * *

They fight aggressive weather and drive through fog turning into misty rain, and then into snow. The road turns icy, and he wonders at the chance of the old rental Oldsmobile slipping and spinning on black ice.

He watches the passing scenery. The road continues on.

An idea forms in his head and metastasizes before he could pause and take a breath: the road may go on, but all roads come to an end. The very idea travels, settles into his stomach, and grows disquiet. There is to be an end to this road, terminating as suddenly as it began the moment Beverly walked into the safe house that had been his home for two weeks since his release from the hospital.

"Kidnapping," was her first word as she marched into his room. She took out an overnight bag from his closet and methodically filled it with the few items in his room. "This is kidnapping. I'm kidnapping a federal witness in an official protective custody," she declared, cavalier and unconcerned. "You, in a word."

He let her usher him out of the house. He stood and watched while she dumped his bag into the backseat of a fleet vehicle. He stood and watched when she opened the passenger side door for him.

When he didn’t make a move, Beverly looked at him for a long moment. "Will, tell me, do you want to stay here?" she asked, voice quiet, even as she swept her arm at the old house behind him.

He opened his mouth. No sound came out. But _no_ , he thought, the answer crystal clear for the first time that he could recall.

No, he _did not_.

He didn't look behind, not once, when he got into the car where Beverly was waiting behind the wheel.

Beverly is behind the wheel, now and still. Days and nights blur. The road goes on. Yet the end of the road exists.

The very thought turns him cold, all the way to his toes.

"Hey," says Beverly, startling him out of his fugue. "Stop thinking so loud."

He blinks and wonders, absurdly, if she could hear thoughts.

"I'm still gainfully employed and have months of unclaimed vacation time. You—you've definitely more than earned your leave of absence. Plus, I know a few tricks." She smiles brazenly. "We can burn the phone, change the car every few hours, and fly under the radar and lay low. Brian's running interference for us, so it should be easy enough."

"He is?" asks Will, surprised despite himself.

She looks unequivocally smug. "Brian's scared of me."

"And he's not afraid of Jack?" he asks, honestly curious.

She levels him a look, and he realizes it’s a tough choice. Jack or Beverly, whose wrath would you rather incur, he asks himself, and feels a flitting sympathy for Zeller.

"We left Jack a few presents. False starts and trails to chase after. Will keep his people busy for a few days." There is a wicked little grin on her face. "Can't believe I'm missing the moment when he figures it all out. He's going to be _furious_."

Her confidence is tangible, tingeing the air just with its mere existence. There is an abrupt, sudden desire to see the grin remain on her face. "Maybe Price can film it for you," he says, surprising himself.

Her laugh is sudden and bright. It feels unfamiliar, yet another novelty in the field of rediscovered unknowns.

But this time, he collects it carefully and holds fast, in his chest, in his heart, to remain an anchor in dark times.

* * *

They are parked at one of the many lakesides they've been passing through. The sun is adrift in the misty sky, leaving smattering glitters of light over the aquamarine waters.

Will leans against their newly acquired truck and breathes in. Beverly is perched on a dilapidated picnic table, typing rapidly on the laptop she's picked up at a pawnshop in the quietest part of a town they passed by earlier. The air freezes. He rubs his hands down his arms to imprint some warmth. The lake, surrounded by dark evergreens, is just beyond.

Slowly, he drifts into the woods.

He steps on frost-covered twigs. No one has walked on this soil, not for some time. The road goes on.

He finds a pebbled pathway leading him to a small dock nested between trees and the lake. The end of the road. That is an absolute, uncontested fact. Jack, despite Beverly's best efforts, will not let this wandering stand. Therefore, this will end.

Planks below him, worn down to soft edges, squeak and complain from prolonged disuse. He reaches the edge of the dock. Nothing mars the lake's blue surface, its utter stillness, until he casts a bone-white shadow over the water.

Then there is a ripple. And two.

The next moment, he's gulping glacial water, nothing but a coldness swallowing him whole.

He thinks, _Ah_.

 _Drowning is not so pitiful_ , he remembers reading once, _as the attempt to rise_.

He doesn't contemplate rising, but his body wants to breathe, so it struggles and fights for air. An arm pulls him up, and suddenly he's no longer swallowing water.

Of course, he thinks absently, Beverly must have been a swimmer. Her hands that guide him out of water onto the land are sure and practiced, while his thoughts are murky and adrift: she must've been a lifeguard growing up. Every summer, she would have volunteered at the local pool, with a smile even brighter than the blazing midday sun. He would like to have seen it. To have been blinded.

When he comes to, he finds himself curled up in the truck's backseat. The heat has been turned up all the way up, and Beverly covers him with a dry blanket before wrapping herself with another.

"You _idiot_ ," she yells, tempers fraying her voice in every direction even as her teeth are chattering. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

The question startles him. It startles her, too. She turns quiet. "Tell me, Will," she says. Her fingers, still shaking a little, find his face and turn it toward hers. "Were you trying to drown yourself?"

"No," he says, and realizes that he means it. He hasn't been trying to kill himself. Somehow, it's rather comforting, knowing that.

Worry lines crease her face, so his answer is not enough to comfort her. "Do you think I was?" he asks, carefully, testing out the words.

She watches him for one long moment. Then she shakes her head. "If you'd really wanted to, you could've done it much earlier. You weren't exactly lacking in opportunities."

There they are again, he thinks. Her edges, whenever he finds them, are never tempered, always blunt. Straight-edged.

"That still doesn't change the fact that you scared the fuck out of me," she grinds out. "Don't ever do that again."

He doesn't remember falling into water. He doesn't remember wanting to. It doesn't mean it wouldn't happen again. Nor does he want to make her promises he can’t keep. More to the point, he would rather not. "I'll try," he says, honestly.

Her eyes study him, careful and incisive. She nods then, like his words are actually good enough. "That _fucker_ ," she says, gritting her teeth. "If only I could get close to him with my Beretta again, I would gladly blow his brains out."

Hannibal. Dead.

That alone wouldn't unbreak Will. It wouldn't remake him, either.

Will still doesn't know where he ends and Hannibal starts, but he knows this. "You wouldn't do that," he tells her. There's a rare feeling of certainty in the knowledge that she wouldn't, not with her unbendable sense of morality.

She fumes, but doesn't disagree. "I'd at least like another chance." She turns skyward and demands, "Another chance to punch his face and break his nose again, if nothing else. Is that too much to ask, _really_?"

It's never that simple.

And yet. Here he is. Still.

"Let's do this again sometime," she grouches, pulling the towel tighter around her, "but preferably somewhere I wouldn't have to freeze my ass off, okay?"

"Florida," he says, absently.

She turns to him, a question in her open face, so he adds, "I like sailing."

For no discernible reason, she cracks up and doesn't stop laughing for some time.

* * *

_Will._

He wakes up to a voice, to a hand ghosting on his shoulder, along his neck—over his heart. He wrenches free from his sheets and from the echoes of his dream, and feels the fractures it left behind. He feels— _cracked_.

Beverly is already sitting up on her bed and turning on the bedside light. He's so twisted up in his sheets that he can barely move. Beverly hands him a glass of water, her hand on his until she's sure his hand is steady enough to hold the glass.

"Why me?" In the face of it, in the strained concern on her face, the question slips out, yanked loose. He's been asking himself the same question, but there's no discernable answer. Or perhaps too many. Neither is a comforting thought, skirting around the edges of his thoughts during all of his waking moments. "Why was it me?"

 _He wanted to be understood_ , said Alana.

And Will—

And Will did.

"Who the hell knows why," says Beverly. "Does it really matter?"

There are many who would want to know why, but her words have strength of conviction, as if with sheer will alone, she could flick away the knowledge that Hannibal would have killed everyone Will knew—tried to kill _her_ —just to have Will to himself. "Look, Will, does it really matter why he wanted you?" she asks him. "Or do _you_ want it to?"

There's a gentle prickle to her questions, as unswerving as her gaze.

He doesn't want it to matter. He doesn't.

He _doesn't_.

"What's happened, happened," says Beverly. "Understanding why—I say it's overrated. Understanding can't undo any of it if you let it tear you apart."

It is a prosaic, or even ordinary, answer. Hannibal would detest it, detest _her_ —would dismiss the sheer ordinariness of it, of her, as artless and commonplace in its wild inexactitude.

"Oh, he would, wouldn't he?" Beverly asks, wry, making Will realize what he's said out loud. "I should be so honored. And if I ask you, what would Will Graham say?"

Her voice is even and calm, improbably so.

Being understood is an overrated pleasure.

Look where it got Hannibal.

Look where it got _him_.

"Okay," she says, unwinding her arms from across her chest. "I don't know about you, but I for one am not willing to let him take another minute of our lives."

She plucks the empty glass from his hands, and without any fanfare, climbs onto his bed, pulling up the blanket around him and over her. "Okay?" she asks, her eyes searching.

Being understood is an overrated pleasure.

It sounds less intangible, less ephemeral, with each iteration.

He breathes. In and out. Prosaic and artless. But maybe necessary, he tells himself.

"Okay," he says out loud.

He watches her fall sleep next to him, hidden among the scrunched up bed sheets and looking unaccountably small, and it somehow lets him breathe again.

* * *

"This is sad," Beverly pronounces, suppressing a yawn and taking in the state of their paisley-wallpapered motel room, "even for us."

 _I'm not sure what that means_ , he thinks, blinking away sleep from his eyes.

She turns to him, and there's a sudden mischief in her eyes. Her hand reaches out and ruffles his hair. After she laughs at his—what must be—bewildered expression, she says, "Seriously, how can you see anything with your hair in the way?"

She rummages through her backpack and somehow secures a pair of scissors. He can't ever recall letting anyone holding a sharp object come near him without flinching away from them, but when she guides him to the bathroom light and tilts her head in a question, he doesn't shrink away from her.

"I used to do this for my brothers," she says, unexpectedly fond. There's genuine pleasure in the way her hands move through his hair.

It's never been difficult to discern for him that she's grown up with brothers. There are reasons why they do what they do, and Beverly Katz is no different. There's always a why, and there's more to the story. And there has been a question, he thinks, a question that should've been asked long before this moment. 

He wants to know.

And just like that, an image clicks into his head, and between one breath and next, he can see her with brothers. Three. All of them still young and wild. One of them died, sudden. An older brother, likely, because she had to learn to take up that empty place, had to grow bigger than what her thin frame would've been able to fill before she naturally could, just by being herself, being this Beverly that Will knows now. That's how it started, how _she_ started, and—

 _Profiling._ The thought abruptly freezes him, churning a cold pit in his stomach. This is profiling, profiling _her_ , and he—

He doesn't—he _can't_.

But—

_But I would tell you if you asked me,_ she's told him once. 

And he wants to know.

"You think you owe me," he makes himself say the words, even though they taste like ashes in his mouth. He feels her hands freeze over his shoulder. He wonders why, suddenly, that he also feels his heart sink. "Is that why?"

She pivots around the chair to face him. "Why what?"

"Why you're here. With me."

"I'm here because I want to be," she says, simple and direct, as if that is all there is to it.

"Any sane person would've run from me a long time ago," he says, and each word burns, punctuated by bright despair. "You're decidedly sane, and you know better than this. So why, then?"

"I told you why. Because I want to be here." She's all sharp edges and bluntness as she meets his eyes. "You tell me, then. You can read people better than anyone. Why am I here?"

An unreasonable anger, sudden and hot, tears loose. "That's _not_ how it works."

"Don't give me that crap." With her face clear and open, she demands, "Will, tell me, I'm asking you—what do I see?"

Beverly Katz that he knows doesn't deal in white lies or self-deceptions. Of all the preciously few things he knows, there is conviction in this knowledge: she's always been as good as her words.

Will takes a breath. And two. Between one breath and next, he slides into her headspace.

Startling in the intensity in her vision, still unbroken, still holding together, is a man.

This is Will Graham, he realizes.

This is her Will Graham. Still tangible. Still here.

And her Will Graham shines.

"Oh," he says, stupidly.

She looks at him, her lips curling up at the corner. "Yes. Oh."

She whirls his chair around, and for the first time in a long time, he sees himself in the mirror.

This is his Will Graham.

It feels only incidental that his Will Graham is also hers.

* * *

At Bethel, Maine, the purportedly tallest snowman in the world greets them.

Beverly stands at the foot of it and looks up in pure glee. "For once, this doesn't actually disappoint."

He watches her take in the view of the giant snowman from all angles and all corners, equally captivated at the sight of her absolute captivation. He watches the way the sunlight reflect lights on her black hair, over the line of her shoulders—for once relaxed without the ever-present tension.

"It's _awesome_ ," she decrees, at length, and he finds himself unable to disagree.

With the tallest snowman hovering over them protectively, they navigate through sporadic waves of tourists and find themselves a small café, decorated with frosted windowpanes and quilt blankets. A golden retriever by the name of Amber dozes off by its fireplace. Will scratches behind her ears and lets her lick at his hands.

Beverly gets them a window table and asks him pick one thing out of the menu.

"One can't subsidize on air alone. You're not a plant"— _anymore_ , she doesn't add—"and photosynthesis doesn't actually work for people, no matter how hard you try." At the look on his face, she says, cheerily, "Hey, I'm a scientist. I know these things."

Her mood is inexplicably contagious. He chooses two slices of strawberry pies while she orders coffee. When the food arrives, she digs into the pie with keenness and enthusiasm in the way that's now both familiar and exasperating.

He watches her eat, and takes a bite, and then two.

After she takes a sip of the coffee, the enthusiasm on her face turns sour. "Wow," she says, voice low, staring into her steaming mug of coffee. "And, now _this_ is officially the shittiest coffee I've ever had."

He tastes it, giving it all due attention. "It really is," he agrees.

Her laugh is, as always, impervious to any outside forces, sustaining and altering its atmosphere at will.

Backlit by the late evening light, everything in the café glows, quelling oncoming darkness.

* * *

They reach the ocean when the pale moon is still hovering over the horizon.

When they reach the end of the silent and empty pier, she flops onto the beams and lets her feet dangle over the edge despite the freezing cold. In a moment, he follows in and does the same.

He doesn't think about jumping.

Together, they wait for the sun to rise over the Atlantic.

"Sailing?" she asks, long into their companionable silence. "Really?"

"Really," he echoes.

"Florida, huh? Sounds nice." She rubs her hands together. "Sounds _warm_."

"Let’s do it."

She turns to him, startled. She watches him for a long moment, parsing his words, considering him. He wonders what she sees, but he doesn't try to glimpse it himself.

He waits for the answer, because he wants to.

When she eventually smiles, it's like a sheet of clouds giving way to the oncoming sunlight.

"Okay, let's," she answers.

Pressure loosens in his hands, in the back of his head, and in his chest. It feels like a smile that's tearing free at last.

* * *

  
They walk back to their car with the rising sun behind them.

She breaks into a yawn and tosses over the car key, which he catches unthinkingly. He holds up the key against the glint of sunlight, and watches her open the passenger side door of the car.

"Let's go find ourselves a boat," she says sleepily, as she finds a comfortable position and settles in it, as if for a long ride.

Her voice is still thick in the air when he finds himself behind the wheel. His hands on the wheel feel solid and steady. They feel like his.

They _are_ his.

"Yes," he promises Beverly, already fast asleep. He takes off his jacket and pulls it up around her. "Let's do that."

And Will Graham starts to drive.

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this during mid-season 2 of Hannibal, for obvious reasons. It's been close to my heart for all this time, though for a long time I didn't think I could ever finish this, let alone write anything anymore. I didn't expect 2020 would be out to change things, big and small, but here we are.
> 
> If you were interested enough to finish the story, thank you! I really hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> (Title from Bon Iver's Holocene.)


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